A Survivor of Brazil’s Worst Air Disaster Tells Story
Just browsing the net on a lazy Saturday, I stumbled upon the story of Joe Sharkey, one of six survivors in Brazil's worst air disaster.
First, a little back story from Wikipedia.
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Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 was a Boeing 737-800 SFP, registration PR-GTD, on a scheduled passenger flight from Manaus, Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, with a planned stop in Brasília on September 29, 2006. While flying over the Amazon in Brazilian center-western state of Mato Grosso, it collided with an Embraer Legacy business jet and crashed in an area of dense rainforest vegetation, 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of the municipality of Peixoto de Azevedo. All 154 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing were killed, while the slightly damaged Embraer was able to land safely with its seven occupants uninjured. |
Joe Sharkey was one of the seven on the Embraer Legacy jet and he writes about his experience in The Sunday Times.
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We flew on smoothly with only the insistent drone of the engines. And then "Bang!" Up front, Henry Yandle said: "We've been hit!" The noise was not "Boom!" Nor did I hear any roar of an approaching plane. I have been on an aeroplane that has been struck by lightning. I have flown in many military jets. I have never heard anything like this. I heard just a big metallic bang, the sort of noise your car might make if your tyre rim thumped into a pothole. Accompanying it was a concussive jolt. The plane did not lose balance or shudder. When I raised the shade, my heart sank. A 4ft section of the wing tip was shorn off, with just a jagged edge remaining. I looked up at the cockpit and tried to read the pilots' body language. |
The rest of the story is amazing, as the pilots and passengers feel the wrath of the Brazilian people, being blamed for the crash.
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To my astonishment, the narrative as it played out in Brazil was this: fat-cat Americans in corporate jet, flying at incorrect altitude and ignoring air-traffic-control orders, kill 154 innocents in midair collision with Brazilian airliner over jungle. |
It is unfortunate that Sharkey takes a pop shot at the President, because with or without the Iraq War, the story still would have been "fat-cat Americans in corporate jet kill 154 innocents in midair".